Virtual Memories
Blind Man's Semaphore |
|||
|
A convergence of publishing, politics, pharmaceuticals, and the personal.
All material copyright
ARCHIVES
2003
|
3.31.2004
Now Get Back To Work!
Here’s a 2003 graduation speech by the president of Principia College. It’s about how busyness keeps us from truly living. Now, because the college is affiliated with Christian Scientists, the tenets of that faith really fill up the second half of the speech. Still, it’s got a lot of good points about How We’re Living nowadays, regardless of religious affiliation (or lack thereof). As my buddy Jack, who forwarded the speech to me, wrote, "If you don't relate to the religious references, substitute 'human being' wherever you encounter ‘Christian Science'." Sounds like a plan. 3.29.2004
". . . the most significant piece of art to react to [9.11] . . ."
Another great review for The Immensity of the Here and Now! Why the heck haven't you bought one already? And if you have bought one, why haven't you bought another one for a friend?
The Dialectic of Politics
Nice piece on BusinessWeek.com about how presidential administrations invariably reject the policies of their immediate predecessor.
Is there a gene for perenially losing The Big One?
Bill Haseltine has retired from Human Genome Sciences, and Chris Byron takes the opportunity to tear him a new hole. I only mention this because, last fall, I sneaked out of a speech by Haseltine at a translational genomics event I was attending in Phoenix, AZ. Why did I sneak out? Because the Yankees had tied up game 7 against the Red Sox in the AL Championship Series, and were on their way to handing Boston its most soul-crushing defeat ever! There was no way I was going to miss that! So I sneaked out on Haseltine's hagiography and watched Mo Rivera mow down the Sox until Aaron Boone got up and hit a home run in the bottom of the 11th for aforementioned soul-crushing defeat. Did I mention that the Yankees season starts tomorrow (in Japan at 5am e.s.t.)? Go, Yankees! Down with Haseltine! I mean, down with Red Sox!
"That was Peter Sellers, my dear / Now go away," he implored
Peter Ustinov died this weekend. I never really followed his work in movies and TV, but Lauren Christy did. 3.26.2004
Capitol Offense, Part I
Hey, VM readers! I've decided to start bringing in guest bloggers as part of my nefarious strategy to develop Virtual Memories into something more like a magazine than a monologue. This week's guest entry is from Todd Kutyla, who provides us with an introduction to Capitol Offense, an occasional column that'll discuss the absurdities of life in Washington, DC. If you have an idea for a column, drop me a line sometime and we'll talk about starting up a side-page on VM. When I was asked to contribute regular postings on life in DC I jumped at the opportunity. Maybe I jumped a bit too quickly, because right after I agreed to write something things got a little crazy here in the nation’s capital—at least for me. It took me a while to figure out what I was going to write about. Ideas were in no short supply, I just couldn’t decide which to pursue in this space and which to save as private rants to my wife and friends. Then I lost my job. I am (at least for the next 5 weeks) a policy analyst with a small think-tank. We do mostly health policy and when one of the major grantmakers decided to change their focus we, and a lot of places like ours, lost a huge source of funding. Add that to the general climate around town—I’d call it bitter—and you have a situation ripe for downsizing. Don’t feel too bad for me though, I was looking to make a move anyway, and this forced me to put things in motion a little faster. By the way, if any of you readers know of anyone looking for a former policy analyst who is really good with people (I was a bartender for 5 years), creative (I’ve written for magazines and apprenticed with an artist/furniture designer), and who is looking to do less policy and more communications/marketing in his next job—barring of course the possibility that somebody will offer him a lot of money to design and build furniture—drop me a line. So here I am with a mortgage and raising two kids in the District, and now I’m racing against the clock to find a new job. What an opportunity. What better way to start writing about life here in DC, where more than your brain, your abilities, or your pocketbook; your Rolodex® is your most valuable asset than to give you a glimpse of what it’s like to look for a job here in the cradle of democracy. Being reasonably well-connected in the health policy arena, I know the value of being able to call up somebody to get advice or information and having that person give you exactly what you need exactly when you need it. Being less well-connected in the communications and/or design fields I also know the panic of flipping through that big black cylinder on my desk and coming up all-but-empty. Fortunately, some of the people in my cylinder are willing to look in their cylinders and I think I’m in as good a shape as I could hope to be at the moment. Nonetheless, it’s a harrowing time. Luckily the cherry blossoms are coming into bloom. I love DC this time of year. Here’s a summary of the job search so far: Last week my boss--who let me say up front, is one of the best people you could ever hope to work for in- or outside of DC—calls me into his office. We’ve been on the financial ropes here for s little while as I mentioned earlier, so I’m not surprised when he tells me that as of the end of April there’s just no money to keep me. Actually, I was planning on telling him the following week—this week—that I’ve started to put out feelers, and ask for his help making some connections. The end of May would have been ideal. But, hey it’s spring along the Potomac, if you have to be unemployed for a few weeks, there’s not too many better places or times to spend the free hours between interviews. This week my boss and I both started making phone calls. Jack is one of the most respected health policy analysts in the city and has contacts all over the place—including with some of the best communications firms in the city. His calls will mean a lot. Even if it’s just getting people to sit down and talk with you, and hopefully give you some of the names out of their big, black cylinders. I’m also working every connection I have, which range from a Partner in a top health communications firm that we’ve worked with in the past, to a Project Manager at an advertising & communications firm who called me last week to order some of our reports for her clients and who I ended up chatting with for 10 or 15 minutes about our project and her relationship status—she broke up with the boyfriend who may or may not have been the guy who was going to rent my basement. I had a meeting with the partner, who hooked me up with a designer friend of his (that’s a story for another time, maybe the next installment) and is putting together a list of contacts for me. I have a meeting next Thursday with a Director at another huge public relations firm that Jack introduced me to. Though I probably don’t want to work there—in large part because I will not be offered a job there—this meeting should garner me another, more targeted and so more valuable list of names. Are you starting to see how this works? I will not send out a cold resume for this job search or respond to a job listing from the Washington Post. In this town, that is a waste of time. Here more than other places I think--perhaps because of the bureaucratic mentality that pervades even the private sector--Human Resource people are the last people you want screening your resume, unless you are a squirrel applying for the job of nut-collector. I’ve never, in ten years and three job searches in this city had any luck with HR people. So I’m grabbing my nose and jumping into this thing with both feet. I have only a vague idea of where I’ll end up. I know at the very least my title in the next position I hold won’t be Policy Analyst or Research Associate. Obviously I will end up doing something connected to politics. Even catering in this town ends up being connected to politics after all. I suppose if I weren’t political to some degree I wouldn’t stay here what with the lead in the water, high crime rate, lack of representation, and oppressive summers. Then again I might--free museums, great running trails, beautiful parks, and of course the cherry blossoms? --TJK 3.24.2004
Quick! Call Zurich!
Now that they know, of course, we'll have to mobilize the cabal. It's hard to believe Gary Kasparov is mixed up in this. I would've thought this was Bobby Fischer's terrain . . .
Google doesn't choke
Why did someone look up jana novotna oops photos on Google this morning, leading him (I'm guessing it's a him) to this site?
Revisionist Memories
The 9/11 commission is in full witch-hunt mode, blaming Clinton for not (illegally) assassinating Bin Laden and blaming Bush for not preemptively invading Afghanistan. The commission members and their staff seem to have forgotten the administration-crippling effects of Clinton's philandering. Thanks to his inability to keep his cock in his pants, years of his administration were paralyzed, and his every action was second-guessed to an unimaginable degree. Remember when, just before the House voted to impeach, he launched a cruise missile strike? That, we were told at the time, was an instance of Wag the Dog syndrome. Now the debate seems to avoid any mention of the effects of blowjobgate on the presidency. (By the way, that attack involved a launch of 200 cruise missiles on Iraq, which had recently kicked out UN weapons inspectors who were trying to ascertain the status of Hussein’s WMD. The shooting war with Iraq was going on long before Bush came into office.) Why, check out this report on the hearings, which discusses Clinton's actions and inactions from 1998 on, and do a word search for "impeachment", "Monica", or "blowjob in the oval office", and you'll come up blank. The entire episode has been elided because, I suppose, it's too sordid. Sorta like Lacuna, Inc. After the bombing of the Cole and the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (and the truck bombing of the WTC in 1993), the consensus seemed to be that Bin Laden's targets were military or overseas. Bush, it's now implied, should’ve foreseen a massively destructive attack on American soil, and preemptively invaded Afghanistan to uproot Al Qaeda and the Taliban. A few months after the most contested election since 1876. With the backing of no foreign power. With a secretary of defense who was hated by the military establishment and was being touted as "first to get fired" in the weeks before 9/11. Both administrations made tons of mistakes, but think back to 9/10/2001, and remember who you were then, and let me know if you honestly thought that anything like the next day was possible. It was so far outside the world we knew that I don't blame anyone for not predicting it and acting on it. Even the Israelis didn't have to do deal with attacks like that day. Just venting, sorry. This sort of revisionist history really irks me. I mean, it's just like when I read a Mitch Lawrence column on the NBA and can see that he’s got his facts wrong. It shouldn't be my job to catch this stuff! Update: Gregg Easterbrook writes about this so much better than I do!
Virtual Memories
Saw The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind last night. If you ever tried to forget her/him, you oughtta see it. If you ever wanted to call her/him, months after it’s all over, you oughtta see it. If you ever let failed love for someone make you put your life in a holding pattern, you oughtta see it. [I wrote some pretty lengthy personal stuff after that paragraph, but I decided that this place just isn’t the forum for that. I’ve tried to be pretty open about my personal life on this blog, but there are a lot of things that I haven’t mentioned, out of privacy considerations and for other reasons (the fact that I have a new girlfriend is one of them). You can write me about reactions to love and its ending, or hit the comments link to start a conversation about it.] Update: Go ape! Yet again! (Thanks to Arts & Letters for the link) 3.23.2004
Cuban Embargo
Just added Mark Cuban's blog to the list of links I like (left). He's done wonders for the NBA in a pretty short time. I'll ramble about the phenomenon more extensively sometime (thus driving away my few remaining readers). 3.22.2004
We could put on a seminar!
Andrew Sullivan discusses Europe's response to 3/11, and tears appeasement a new hole. [The Islamist war] existed and grew in strength and potency throughout the 1990s. it draws its roots from the Egyptian Brotherhood in the 1970s and 1980s. It is quite candid in its goals: expulsion of all infidels from Islamic lands, the subjugation of political pluralism to fascistic theocracy, the elimination of all Jews anywhere, the enslavement of women, the murder of homosexuals, and the expansion of a new Islamic realm up to and beyond the medieval boundaries of Islam's golden past. Bin Laden spoke of reclaiming Andalusia in Spain long before George W. Bush was even president. He was building terror camps and seeking weapons of mass destruction while Bill Clinton was in the White House. Blaming the policeman for exposing and punishing the criminal may feel good temporarily. But it is a fool's errand. Read all about it. Update: BusinessWeek gets in on the action! 3.21.2004
When celebrity sucks
Pretty harsh piece in Sunday's NY Post on Martha Stewart's kid, Alexis. Why, in only the second paragraph, we get: Some slam Alexis, 38, as a tightly wound and gloomy introvert who rarely shows emotion--unless she's nursing a grudge--and hasn't dealt with the emotional scars of her parents' bitter divorce. I've done my share of goofing on Martha Stewart, but that's a rough characterization to wake up to on a Sunday morning (esp. as it could sorta characterize me, on a bad day). But you can decide for yourself, dear reader.
The Passion of the Romero
Dawn of the Dead outsells The Passion! Two movies about resurrection dominate the box office! Guess which one has the really gross special effects and shows a guy getting tortured to death? 3.19.2004
3.18.2004
Unhappy VJ Day
JJ Jackson, one of the initial five VJs on MTV, died yesterday. Condolences to his family and friends. The first concert I ever went to was Asia, back in 1983. My mom's friend John was the band's financial manager. After the show, we got to go backstage to meet the band and guest emcee that night, MTV VJ Alan Hunter (the blond one)! Trust me: the VJs used to be celebrities. Of course, this was back in the time when MTV showed music videos. The next concert I went to was Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, with Til Tuesday opening up. I don't go to shows much anymore, and certainly not "concerts." Most of the music I listen to nowadays comes from acts that are either dead, defunct, drawn or probably not too good live (unless the audience is dosed on X).
Roth Rules!
Just for name recognition, I'd head to this exhibition, but it's at the MoMA in Queens, and I'll need to get my passport renewed before I can travel that far. 3.15.2004
Homage to Catatonia
Looks like I was wrong in We Stand Together. The Spanish electorate has spoken, and it’s voted in the socialist party, which plans to withdraw troops from Iraq. Evidently, the Al Qaeda connection to the Madrid bombings has left the public with little taste for foreign involvement. This, of course, is part of what Al Qaeda seems to want, and what they expected of the U.S. following 9.11. I think the leadership was operating under the Black Hawk Down model, where America would withdraw from conflict as soon as it saw its soldiers in bodybags. I’m still trying to parse the logic of the left-wing voters in Spain, though. After all, the big outcry against the war in Iraq is that Bush and Blair lied to the world about a connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s regime. So, let’s assume that the attacks in Madrid were conducted by Al Qaeda. If the attack was conducted in response to Spain’s involvement in the war, then it would seem that there is a connection between those two groups, and that the left’s complaints are incorrect. The war, then, was justified to smash a national base for terrorists. And if Al Qaeda doesn’t have any interest in "avenging" Spanish involvement in Iraq, then the left’s vote against the conservative government makes no sense. Which is to say, the vote for the socialist party smells like appeasement to me. And it makes less sense particularly for Spain, considering Bin Laden’s comments about wanting to restore the Caliphate (which would, y’know, involve taking over Spain). I have a lot more that I’d like to write/discuss about this subject, but I have a lot of work to do at the day job (conference all week in New York), so I’m going to have to cut this short. 3.13.2004
We stand together
Went to the Spanish Consulate in New York yesterday to bring flowers as a memorial for the victims of the Madrid bombings. Credit to Instapundit for suggesting the idea on his site. Picture of the memorial below. There wasn't much there, as you can see; the Spanish embassy in Washington received many more signs of support. If you'd like to show your solidarity with the people of Spain, here's how. I'm not a terrorism expert, but the initial reports give me the impression that the attack was an al-Qaeda operation, rather than the ETA. After all, "conventional" terrorists tend to claim responsibility and use their attacks to bring attention to a particular cause or grievance. Thus far, we've heard nothing about the motivation for the attack, which is why I think that it's another offensive in the war. Andrew Sullivan links to an editorial from Le Monde discussing the sea change brought about by the Madrid bombings.  3.12.2004
And I thought OUR impeachment battles were tough . . .
South Korea's parliament, or an outtake from The Matrix Reloaded? 
It's all about location
I hang out in New York, I bump into Jon Stewart in a parking garage. I go to Orlando, I bump into Danny Schayes at Bahama Breeze. 3.09.2004
Pretty half-assed for a worldwide conspiracy, if you ask me
"The Lord thundering down his wrath," my ass. Read this one all the way to the last line. It's worth it. 3.08.2004
In the MausHaus
I just landed in Orlando for the Parenteral Drug Association's annual meeting. It was my seventh flight this year. Fortunately, I don't have any air-travel till June, when I head out to the BIO show. For some reason (possibly the coffee I had before the flight), I was pretty wired into the turbulence we had on takeoff and initial ascent. But I mellowed out after a while, read most of Radiance, by Carter Scholz, and listened to the Pod for a little while. Boy, with Radiance, 100 Suns, and Intelligence Wars, you'd think I've started to pick up on a trend. By the way: This morning, I woke up to this view: 
Persian Perspective
The Brooding Persian writes: O.K. I read your piece on The Passion a few times and was left needing more. You always pull back the moment I expect otherwise…sort of like the stiffness you described experiencing in the gathering of the practicing religious friends who wanted to make a (what was it, honest? real?) Jew out of you; or when you promised to let us know why you carried a suitcase around and never did. I read and talk to people mostly out of curiosity about their take on matters I have my takes on. We read different things and move in different circles and that makes it all the more interesting. If I want to read theology, I read theology…there all gazillion different interpretations and I struggle with them as I presume others do as well. But why is it that this particular fellow I talk to feels the need to insist on this particular flavor of interpretation? What makes him tick? What does it do for him? What does his choice tell me about this particular individual who happens to have peeked my curiosity. Take your eloquently passionate friend who argues that there are millions who believe they want to go to heaven to fuck 72 virgins. If in a bar, I might play along and have a few laughs. But do I really believe that millions make a million decisions a day really always thinking ultimately of fucking 72 virgins? I don’t care who she is, what religion she believes in, whether she is an actress, a construction worker, a writer or a stripper. I am after the impulses—that bundle of visceral reactions that make her choose to believe in this particular version of causation when observing religious disposition of a segment of humanity. So then, the question for me; why is it you feel so pissed about this movie? The planet is/has always been filled with “sects” I take an interest in them, for sometimes sects are the most interesting things around and often the most dangerous. No cogent argument here for ignoring them. Same goes for Mad Max on Theology. Do any of us really want to be always trapped within a particular role in our lives? Can’t we expect to break out and redefine ourselves?Transform ourselves and others? To move on and have others move on with us? Leave theology to theologians? I want the fucking theologians to stop having monopoly over theological issue . . . perhaps we all end up better/happier/safer for the move. So give me that impulse. I think we all have it. I had a nightmare last night and woke up sweating. You know what it was? Me in a hood—the type pulled—all too often--over the head of the Afghans and the Iraqis. See, I might give you a thousands and one different accounts of why Bush really is pissing me off. But deep down it comes down to the hood. That is my honest, visceral take on the American campaign in the Middle East. I sit in my apartment each night expecting/waiting for the knock . . . but no nightmares. I have been shot in the face . . . attacked by a sword . . . plane accident, to no real effect. But I just can’t shake the goddamn hood even if it has nothing to do with me. What is it you can’t shake about this movie? Or am I simply just fucked up? (Hint: rhetorical-you don’t have to answer) 3.06.2004
More stuff
I added a bunch of links this morning, including one for a blog from a buddy of mine from grad school. I haven't read it yet, but I'm hoping he has something to write about. Also, to help the page load quicker (for the readers who are on dialup, and I know you're out there), I got rid of the album-cover images. I plan on adding some music function to a side-blog in the next few weeks. There'll be music reviews, lists of mixes, and some desert-island-style CD picks from myself and other people for whom music matters. Details to come. 3.05.2004
New stuff
You can now post comments directly to Virtual Memories, rather than e-mailing me about my asinine remarks. Don't say I never did anything for you. --The Management
Simple Things
Doesn’t take much to make me happy. The other day, my publisher and I were leaving a Thai restaurant in Nyack, NY, where we’d had pretty tasty lunch. We passed a little indy record store. My publisher stopped and looked in the window. “Hey! Hootie & the Blowfish Greatest Hits!” he said. “Ooh!” I replied. “A new Zero 7 record!” I hurried in to buy it. My publisher looked over the Hootie record and was disappointed to find that, of the 14 tracks, 8 of them came from the first album. I, meanwhile, beamed over the prospect of hearing new music from Zero 7. Their first album is one of my faves of recent years, with a song that has muscled its way onto the non-permanent roster of my favorite songs ever (like the UN Security Council, 5 songs have a permanent membership, while another 10 songs get a temporary place on the list). So pardon me if I chill out for a while. 3.03.2004
3.02.2004
3.01.2004
A Lonely Outpost on the Internet
It finally happened. Someone has hit upon a Google search for which Virtual Memories is the ONLY page to come up. The search terms, you ask? methylenedioxymethamphetamine farted Should I be worried that someone was looking this up at 2:30am on Sunday night/Monday morning? Did the user have an embarrassing moment at a rave this weekend? Inquiring minds . . .
|
||
